**DISCLAIMER** I do not own Witchblade, nor do I claim to.
None of the characters belong to me. They are all property of the Warner Bros.
network and Top Cow. So please, don't sue me for having a little fun!

Author's Note: The
inspiration for this story came from the Plot Bunnies page at http://usa.internations.net/contents/behindthescenes/plotbunnies.htm
Yes, it was originally doughnuts, but, well, my friends and I have a very
long-standing joke about waffles, and waffles sounded much more random. In the
context of a police precinct, nobody wonders about references to doughnuts. *grins
evilly*

"Time to
make the waffles!"

Sara
Pezzini and her partner Danny Woo turned to stare at the young man who had
spoken. He had been sitting silently at Sara's computer for several minutes,
attempting to identify a particular frame in a security video the pair had
shown him. Now, he stood up, gave them both a wide smile, and wandered out of
the room.

Sara
turned her stare to Danny, who cocked an eyebrow at her. "What was that about?" he asked.

"Was hoping you could tell me," Sara said, puzzled.

"Waffles," Danny repeated blankly, craning his neck
in an attempt to see where the boy had got to.

Sara crossed the room and poked
her head out the door. "Gabriel!" she bellowed. "Gabrie—" She stopped when she
saw him coming back across the precinct toward her. "Where did you just disappear
to?"

"Waffles," he said cryptically,
sliding back into the office and resuming his seat at the computer as if
nothing had happened.

Sara and Danny exchanged another
quizzical look and then decided they didn't want to know.

Gabriel Bowman was quite brilliant
and a good asset to the precinct, but occasionally the two homicide detectives
wondered about him. The number of hours he spent in his dim apartment,
researching various artifacts on his numerous computers, could not possibly be
healthy for anyone, though up until just now it hadn't appeared to have had any
adverse effects on him.

"Got it!" he said abruptly,
startling the detectives again. He looked at them quite seriously, as if no
mention whatsoever had been made of breakfast foodstuffs. "I found the frame."

Sara and Danny crossed the room
and peered over Gabriel's shoulder at the computer screen.

The two detectives had invited the young artifacts
dealer to join them in their investigation of a recent string of bizarre
murders; sometimes he liked to film their investigations as practice for the
documentary he hoped to produce one day, and this had struck them as a good one
for him to work with since there was a huge amount of media attention
surrounding it. Three women in two weeks had been going about their ordinary
business when their heads had suddenly been lopped off – apparently by nothing,
claimed the witnesses. The latest one, however, had been caught on tape when it
happened just outside a bank, and Gabriel had watched the scene five or six
times before deciding to go through it frame by frame.

What he had finally found was, in
fact, two frames, in which a blur of white appeared before the victim's neck
split and the head dropped to the ground. Its appearance in only two frames
explained why no witnesses had seen it; it would have been visible for merely a
tenth of a second. It had taken Gabriel's hawk-sharp eyes to catch it. And it
was still not remotely clear what "it" was – the smear of white on the
black-and-white film might have been nearly anything: light, metal, smoke…

Sara sighed. "Well, that's not
much help, is it? Can you clean it up any more than that, Gabriel?"

"Probably not much," he replied,
shaking his head, "but I'll give it a shot. I'll need to take it home though. I
need my computer for this."

"Sure thing, kid," Danny told him.
"Anything you can tell us about it would be appreciated."

"Waffles," Gabriel said, standing
up.

"What?!" Sara and Danny exclaimed
in unison.

Gabriel blinked. "I said, I'll be
back in a few hours."

"No you didn't," Sara objected.
"You said—" When Gabriel looked at her as if she were acting strangely, she
stopped. "Never mind."

"Um, yeah… whatever. Anyway. I'll
be back."

"Is he okay?" Danny asked Sara as
Gabriel disappeared out the door.

Sara was still staring after him.
"I'm startin' to wonder…" she muttered.

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